Muddy Waters: The Army Engineers and the Nation's Rivers by Arthur Maass: 
Here's a quote from Harold Ickes in the Foreword: "One way to describe 
the Corps of the Army Engineers would be to say that it is the most 
powerful and pervasive lobby in Washington. The aristocrats who 
constitute it are our highest ruling class. They are not only the 
political elite of the army, they are the perfect flowers of bureaucracy. 
At least, this is the reflection that their mirrors disclose to them. 
Within the fields that they have elected to occupy, they are the law--and 
therefore above the law...It is to be doubted whether any Federal agency 
in the history of this country has so wantonly wasted money on worthless 
projects as has the Corps of Army Engineers...No more lawless or 
irresponsible Federal group than the Corps of Army Engineers has ever 
attempted to operate in the United States either outside of or within the 
law."


Dams and Other Disasters: A Century of the Army Corps of Engineers in 
Civil Works by Arthur E. Morgan: Here's a quote from the dust jacket: 
"The Army Corps of Engineers is generally known as a guardian of the 
public interest and facilitator of scientific progress. This carefully 
nurtured image has been the result of classification of documents relating 
to Corps failures and the selective re-writing of Corps history. In Dams 
and Other Disasters, Arthur Morgan, first chairman of the Tennessee Valley 
Authority, explodes the self-publicized image of the Army Corps and 
reveals the full report of its century-long record of scientific 
inadequacy and environmental neglect."